


take off your clothes and disappear

by lackingsoy



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Dreams and Nightmares, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Medicated Andrew Minyard, One (1) Pun, POV Alternating, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Trauma, Withdrawal, let's add Pain, lots of P's going on there, riko can die, uno reverse card played
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26041417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackingsoy/pseuds/lackingsoy
Summary: They recognize each other from the start. A yes, a no, and a maybe between Day and Minyard.
Relationships: Kevin Day & Andrew Minyard, Kevin Day/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	1. you'll never see us again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nothing explicit is detailed below, but undertones remain and carry over. read at your discretion, or exit the tab entirely.  
> fic title lifted from crywolf's _[beauty is not a need, she is an ecstasy (respirate)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHDC4tjpn8I&ab_channel=Crywolf)_

They aren’t all terrible, his dreams.

In some of them, Riko’s hands will trace the sides of his stomach and there will be no scars to find, no wounds to reopen, and there will be a simple smile playing across Riko's face.

In those dreams, they know each other too well to speak. Neither of their cheekbones are marked--miraculous and simple-like--and Kevin doesn't stop to wonder why. He whispers something in French; Riko’s smile broadens, a sliver of sun. Precious, Kevin calls him. 

My precious.

He doesn’t wake up screaming, but he thinks he should have.

Kevin wakes up, invariably, with the burn of acid tears already leaking out the side of his eyes and the clench of his hands on his sheets. Instantly, the ache of his unhealed left hand pours back over his consciousness, and his right swings out to the side, grasping wildly for the cup of water his father--the coach left out for him. With painkillers. 

(No alcohol, Wymack’s voice dictated, gruff and as soothing as he could get it: at least, not with medicine. Before bed, he checked to make sure the wine and alcohol cabinets were still under lock and key.)

Kevin over-reaches and knows the moment he tips the glass over. That moment of mistake and suspension. He's paralyzed as the water splashes across the coffee table. 

“Must you make a mess of everything else?”

The shadow that Kevin assumed would remain one in the far arch of the window on the other side of the room shifts and changes. It comes into the meager cast of light, slow and sedated.

Minyard's temple is still bruised from where Matt clipped him with a racquet in yesterday’s practice match. He was smiling then, giddy off his medication, pain simple fodder for laughter.

There is not even a trace of a smile now.

Kevin snatches up the aspirin bottle and shakes two pills free, swallowing them dry. They go down hard; sliding from his throat to his chest where the sensation of them linger, hard and like grit in the meat of him.

“It’s your mess now,” he forces himself to say, hand clawed into the sweaty front of his shirt. Minyard watches him without moving any closer, standing there like an apparition or somebody’s boogeyman.

His, now, Kevin dully supposes.

“The leash goes both ways,” Minyard says. “Why are you awake?”

 _Why are you_ , Kevin bites back, because their deal isn’t and shouldn’t be a prelude to a relationship. He will hold up his end of the bargain no matter what, and so will Andrew Minyard. They will be functional that way; give and take, rise and fall, a consistent back and forth Kevin can imagine already on the court.

Just for that, and only for that, Kevin offers him a modicum of the truth. From one scarred hand into another: “Riko,” but Minyard probably already guessed that. He's never been subtle with his terrors.

So Kevin clears his throat, licks his lips. Blinks away any residual tears. Clarifies: “He was touching me.”

Minyard's eyes harden. Kevin witnesses the coolness slide farther and farther away from composure and for a sliver of a moment allows himself to breathe victory: _not so soulless after all_. But he doesn’t let his words hang, and interjects with, “Not like that. Not in this dream, anyway. It was,” he thinks of Riko, numberless and soft and content and--and _happy_ , and his voice cracks, finally. “It was almost good.” 

“A rapist can never be “almost good”,” Minyard says, and here he closes the distance in two precise strides and Kevin can’t even back out of it, the sofa pressed up solidly against his back. Minyard's there in his space, two pale fingers pressed down on the back of Kevin’s left hand. Directly on his scar, pink, puckered and pathetic. Pain flares up at the flat pressure he’s applying; Kevin juts his teeth into his tongue and drags his eyes up to Minyard's wrist, wristband, bicep, shoulder, clavicle.

His face is the most broken open Kevin has seen of it since he first arrived at Wymack’s doorstep, shell-shocked and newly crippled. 

“Do you hear me.” Minyard presses down harder, and Kevin’s pulse leaps into his mouth, pain in the hard unyielding line of his lips. “Yes or no, Kevin Day.”

"Yes," Kevin gives. “I hear you." His gaze doesn't stray from the fine points of anger he can see fixed in the flints of Minyard's eyes. There is something else in there, too, something darker.

Recognition.

He wants to vomit then--or cry and thrash, but he can not bring himself to throw off Minyard's hand, so he doesn't. If the world was kind to them, they wouldn't be up at four in the morning, staring down shared horrors as if through a revolving mirror.

It's an upside-down confession and a terrible acknowledgment all at once: “You?”

Minyard doesn’t move from where he is hunched over Kevin like a perfect shadow, the two of them still connected through a two-fingered touch. It still hurts. But the pain is secondary as Kevin watches the anger and the hate and the recognition in Minyard's face shudder and recede, taking any semblance of a boy with it. 

“Yes,” Andrew says, and turns away. 


	2. a friend is a friend and we all know how this will end

His little stunt makes him sleepless for another day and another night.

If Day notices, he doesn't say a thing. Neither of them mentions what transpired between them, and Andrew doesn't want to be reminded of the redness around Day’s eyes and his almost-love in his "it was almost good."

The mere thought of it makes something turn over in Andrew's stomach. Makes the steel in his mind go bone-white.

Aaron still doesn’t deign to look at him. Nicky looks faintly uncomfortable whenever he tries. Wymack just leaves him alone entirely. Renee greets him when she sees him; Seth snarls uselessly at him; the rest of Day’s team just maneuvers around him.

And Day?

Day is at Andrew's heels, wherever, whenever, no matter what. He goes wherever Andrew goes, two feet fallen quiet behind him because he’s already learned how to walk in complete tandem with Andrew. Andrew doesn’t question it, but the first time he threw a mildly murderous look back at this new steep shadow of his, Day stared back with two cool greens and motioned him to get on with it.

Anyone else, he can probably tolerate. Their looks are stupid and insipid and uncomprehending. But Kevin Day looks at him like he can trace the exact path of his hatred, his horrors and hurts. The insides of Andrew’s wristbands grow intolerably hot whenever he catches Day watching him, gaze narrow and blank and perfectly vigilant. No trace of booze nor the blur of rum; but in spite of the clear twitching and other withdrawal symptoms, Day keeps his eyes on Andrew--always.

The little indignant sting in his knuckles tells him exactly how he feels about that.

Andrew makes sure to laugh at least twice in response to something Wymack hammers over their heads and slides his eyes all over the court, unfocused and uncaring like a parachute gone haywire. Day’s there as he invariably is, stiff on the sidelines, eyes fixed on the gleam of the court and the plays of the game. He is doing that thing with his left hand, where he presses it to his chest and cradles it like the wound and scar Riko put on him is something to be held.

The buzz in Andrew’s mind goes silent, and he shuts down the goal for the first time in the match, slamming his racquet so hard against the ball both go flying. Matt gives him a startled look through the thick of his helmet, and Kevin’s face is up now, so Andrew just shrugs, huge and exaggerated, and prances off the court during half-time. 

Then he waits.

“Won’t those kill you?”

Day’s voice rounds the corner before he does. Andrew waits for him to come completely into view, ratty sweatshirt and jeans and all, with his crusty white cast and exhaustion swelled grey beneath his eyes. 

He still manages to slant a hip, though, a look of annoyance fixed on his face, as entitled as any other six-foot cultist that walks fresh out of Evermore. 

“We all have our little suicides,” Andrew replies, and pulls up the side of his mouth in a smile, all teeth, and watches Day wince a little. Andrew doesn’t particularly feel like mentioning that he doesn’t take his meds, not always and not today. Which is why he’s leaned against the back of PSU’s gym, smoking up a storm next to a dumpster, attempting to take off the edge of his own withdrawal. 

Andrew aims the cigarette at Day, ashes tumbling off and hitting Day square in the chest. His face instantly sours with displeasure, the blatant honesty of it giving Andrew a distant pang of amusement. If only Riko could see his pet now.

“You have a drinking habit. I have a smoking habit. Maybe we should get a drug addict in here too.”

Day gives him a dull look and Andrew would call it unimpressed if not for the actual tinge of surprise there. “You’re medicated right now,” he points out, slowly. 

“Oh.” Andrew loosens his jaw, makes himself a picture of surprise. “Oh! My, my, Day, you might just be right! I _am_ high, aren't I?"

Day blows a long sigh through his nose. "You are," he says, eventually, and looks a little confused. "Can we please go back inside?"

The backs of his knuckles sing. "I really don't like that word," Andrew says, pretense peeled back for a lightening of a second. The smile stays idle and loose on his face, but edges toward something not so innocuous. "Obliterate it from your vocabulary."

Day looks back at him, momentarily silenced, and there it is: that recognition again, something cementing in his gaze. 

"You didn't take your meds," He says, and it's not phrased like a question.

Andrew stares back, pushing the cigarette past the brink of his lips, and his smile might as well cut. Well. "Whatever do you mean.”

"This," Day waves a hand towards the person-suit of him without grazing Andrew. "You, playing mind games."

"I'm too out of my mind most of the time to play games, Kevin Day," and here Andrew blows a flume of smoke into the flat of his face, which is also to say: you’re a canvas full of holes, and I intend to peer into each and every one. 

Day just scowls at him, oblivious. "You can drop it. Whatever farce you're playing, I'm done with it."

Andrew takes another drag, smoke pungent in the back of his throat. Kevin Day: a splintered puzzle, a stopped clock, a raw nerve with no end. 

"No," Andrew says, and cleaves the smile off his face.


	3. i should've wrote a letter

Between haunting the court sidelines, the living room of Wymack’s apartment, Wymack's locked wine cabinet, and Wymack's laptop, Kevin keeps most of his attention on Andrew. Watches him go through the motions of living, gliding through the day like it can slide off him at any given moment.

Kevin recognizes the restlessness and the lucid impression of him in between cigarettes and tucks it all away. It's how the careful non-recognition in Andrew's blank gaze is made, the morning after.

But he doesn’t mention it, and Andrew doesn't bother playing fakeouts with him. Kevin just watches him stomp out his tremors and wash a smile full of teeth across his face. It's so dangerous and self-sabotaging of him it may as well confirm that there’s more to Andrew’s little veneer than he allows.

Kevin just has to call his bluff.

He does.

The next time he jerks free of a nightmare, red-faced and thoroughly terrorized, Andrew isn't there. 

Kevin rises from his makeshift couch-bed and stares out; the living room is dark, hazy and heavy with filtered streetlight. No trace of cigarette smoke or pale-gold halos of hair.

He grasps blindly for his shoes on the carpeted floor and shoves his feet into socks, snags Wymack's keys from the awkward spillage from his duffel bag. Then leaves. 

The night air hits him the moment he shuts the door. It’s an eerie, delirious feeling, to leave his mock haven for the first time since he stumbled into it, but he finds that perhaps he can get used to it, if Andrew is what he says he can be. The crippling emptiness of nobody beside him is so sharp and distinct it helps convince Kevin he's finally outside of that hellhole--cut loose and completely adrift.

Free to roam, wander, scream and hurt beyond Riko's grasp. 

He takes off like a shot in the dark.

Kevin memorized the whole neighborhood his first week here. Not for when the Master invariably comes to take him back, but for when he needs to return to Evermore of his own volition. (Raven's black claimed him when he was young, and he is not so naive to think it does not claim him now. The Court must have its Two.) 

He hasn't breathed a word to anyone about any of it. They would simply stare at him--too wholly stupefied to be actually enraged--and call him a coward and a maniac in every language they can name. Andrew may even break his legs the way Riko broke his game.

Maybe. Kevin doesn't want to know how badly Andrew takes to lies and half-truths. 

So he runs. It's easy work, letting his legs take him. The keys Wymack gave him on his first day jingle violently in his pocket. Concrete surges up at him as he takes a leap into the empty street. His cast rattles in time with his heartbeat. His breath flies out of him.

By the time the sun starts its tedious climb back up the expanse of sky, Kevin’s lapped the neighborhood about a dozen and a half times, and he finds Andrew sitting on the curb right outside Wymack’s place, head ducked down between his knees.

It's the surprise that makes Kevin speak first. “You’re up.”

Andrew raises his mattress-tousled hair and stares blankly at him. “You're tedious,” he informs him. “Get back inside.”

“It’s five past seven,” Kevin replies, trying not to jostle his cast too much as he bends to stretch his legs. “We’re already late to be up.” The Master would have beaten him for his one-hour transgression. 

“It’s ass o’clock too, apparently,” is the thing Andrew settles with, looking very much like he needs a smoke. “I’m not going to repeat myself, Day.”

Kevin glares up at him. “I’m not going back to bed.”

“I don’t care,” Andrew says. “Get back inside.” 

“Are you medicated right now?”

“Would that make this any easier?”

Kevin straightens. Turns his glare onto Andrew’s hand. They are shaking in a fine, restrained tremor. “You haven't smoked yet. Why?”

Andrew watches Kevin watch him for a while before standing from his perch. “To be sure,” is all he gives as he turns shoulders and leaves Kevin there on the porch.

That, predictably, gets Kevin storming in after him. “What does that mean?”

“It means what it means.” Andrew gives an exaggerated shrug. “I said what I said.”

“Say more, then, because you aren't making sense.” 

A sound peels out of Andrew’s mouth, smothered somewhere between an actual laugh and a deadened sigh. It sounds unused, as if taken out of a rusted, bolted box. He turns on Kevin, lips lifted in a mock-smile. “The sense I make is just fine, Kevin. Use the side of your brain that isn't entirely consumed by Exy, will you?"

Kevin opens his mouth to snap back. Then it lands. Hard. "Did you just call me by my name?"

Andrew looks totally indifferent as he pries out his crumpled cigarette pack. "I have been. Since day one." 

"Not by my first name." Kevin stares at him, something stirring in his chest. Not daring to hope, but not strong enough to deny himself the ache of it. 

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Day." Andrew shakes a stick out, props it in between his index and middle finger. "I don't care so much about this," waves the thing between them in lieu of a hand, "to be on first-name basis."

Kevin doesn't reply. He just snatches the lighter off the nearby counter with his good hand and steps into Andrew's sphere of personal space. Edges one foot in, one foot out, crossing an uncontested line. Testing the boundaries of this new thing forming between them like a lifeline or a pit of quicksand.

He raises his eyes to Andrew's only to find him already watching, a warning and something else in the shadow of his eyes. 

Kevin doesn't know what he wants. He doesn't think he wants to know what he wants, because it is never a good nor sane thing to want and want so deeply he would be willing to tear his fingers off in order to get his hands on it. 

That's what happened with Exy, and Riko broke his left hand. 

"Yes or no, Andrew?" Kevin says, rolling the words from his mouth, prying them one-by-one off the meat of his tongue. Weighing them between canines. They are concepts Kevin never considered before, not in this light.

They are naked and new, with the potential to leave him for dead.

Yes, No, and Andrew. 

(How badly will Kevin have to bend, to believe in that?)

Andrew leans forward ever so slightly and Kevin takes his cue, flicking the lighter on with a nail. A slender flame shivers to life in the distance between their chests. Kevin lifts it to the height of Andrew's collarbone and lets him do the rest, blonde head dipping to catch sparks.

Smoke streams out of his nostrils and over the upper half of his face by the time he draws back, grey-black sifting through his eyelashes like evaporating fingertips. Kevin studies Andrew like that, smoke and not-smile and all, the faintest sliver of a heartbeat of want strumming into existence in his chest.

"Maybe," Andrew says, and it takes the shape of an almost-promise. 

**Author's Note:**

> chapter titles are lifted from sufjan stevens's carrie & lowell but vancouver sleep clinic holds this fic's [soul](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db97HUw3ToA) in its aromatic palms


End file.
